That was probably an IBM 604.[1] The 604 was the first piece of electronic computing equipment manufactured and sold in quantity. It's an illustration of the big problem of the era - no good memory devices. The 604 had electronic add, subtract, multiply, divide, and control flow, but was programmed with a plugboard and had punched-card I/O. No place to store data other than a few registers.

Tube failure was more or less under control by then. IBM had a tube R&D center on the Hudson River working on that. They came up with a more reliable tube design and had RCA make the tubes in quantity. Experimental machines like the ENIAC could have big staffs replacing tubes and maintaining the machine, but a commercial product had to have reliable operation.

IBM had people working on electronic computing as early as 1936, but it took over a decade to get to a shippable product. WWII got in the way, of course.

[1] http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/604.html